Do Not Click the 'More Info' Link

It comes as something of a surprise to discover that one's blemish-less credit score has, in fact, been blemished.

After battling my way through the main switchboard, with digressions to some seemingly random offices, I ended up at the accounting and billing department. The lady there brought up my record and informed me that this bill was for a procedure performed in January of last year. Since the procedure was to remove a tumor (Oh, haven't I mentioned that before?), I expressed my surprise that my health insurance did not cover the bill. There was a rustling of papers at her end, followed by a thoughtful pause, followed by her saying "hmm" under her breath. She then told me that she was going to put me on hold while she handed me over to her supervisor.

By the time the supervisor came on the line, I was feeling somewhat disgruntled. I pointed out that, whenever I go to a new doctor or to any medical facility, the first thing I have to do is fill out a telephone directory-sized stack of papers. I have to sit there for hours entering the same information page by page, over and over again, ad nauseam. Amazingly enough, this information actually included my name and address. I went on to say that, based on this, I was somewhat surprised to discover that the hospital was sending bills to an address from so far in my past that I'd forgotten all about it.

I reiterated my point about being surprised that my insurance had not covered this bill. Once again, there was a thoughtful pause, and then the supervisor said, "It's worse than you think... looking at these papers, it appears that we didn't even file this bill with your insurance company in the first place."

I was flabbergasted by this news. Rarely has my flabber been so gasted. The lady then said, "Whatever you do, don't pay this bill." (It's a pity the hospital hadn't taken this attitude right from the beginning. That would have saved us all a lot of trouble.) I responded that I had paid it to the collection agency over the phone a few minutes earlier. Once again, there was a thoughtful pause, and then the lady leaped into action.

Apparently, Huntsville Hospital passes quite a lot of unpaid bills to this collection agency, so the lady has developed a close relationship with the agency's head. She informed me that, as soon as we finished our conversation, she would call that person and ask for an immediate refund to my credit card. She would then contact all the credit agencies, explain that it was a mistake, ask that it be expunged from my records, and send me a letter putting all this in writing.

Would that life were so easy. It's my understanding that it can take quite some time for one's credit score to recover from this sort of thing. On the bright side, at least I discovered that there was a problem, and I managed to sort it out. It would have been a pain if I were ever to be rushed to the hospital, and the hospital said, "We can't treat you, because you owe us some money."

Another thing that just struck me is that I pay one of the big three credit companies a monthly retainer to inform me if anyone tries to open an account in my name or if anything occurs to hurt my credit. I never received any notification about the collection agency sullying my good name. As soon as I finish this blog, I think another telephone call is in order. In the meantime, has anything like this ever happened to you?

Really interesting why you had not been notified by the credit agencies you use, but seems to me it was a bit careless to pay the bill over the telephone to a side company, not the hospital. I realize we can not keep track of everything, but when it comes to credit issues for consumers it's better to deal with the reliable companies you know.

My favorite story along those lines was when a customer called tech support because he couldn't get a C compiler to work. Tech support asked him: "does it compile 'hello, world'?" The customer asked: "Where do I get the source code for that?"

@Mary: When I called the credit agency to correct the issue, the first question I was asked was if "April" was an alternate spelling for "Mary".

This reminds me of a story tole to me by EDA Analyst Gary Smith. This was in th edays of print magazines -- apparently some junior fact-checker called him up to check some details, and one of the questions they asked was "how do you spell E-D-A?" LOL

We refinanced our mortgage a few years ago and an unknown name showed up in our paper work as one of my aliases. This triggered some alarm as I had no idea who this person was. The lender indicated they got the information from one of the credit agencies. When I called the credit agency to correct the issue, the first question I was asked was if "April" was an alternate spelling for "Mary". All I can say to that is I sincerely hope the woman was working from some script. I am still untangling that one and it has had an effect on my report as she has some outstanding debts in collection. I now get letters at my house addressed to her. Now I get reports annually from each of the agencies to check for mistakes. I also have a monitoring service and they also said nothing. I am thinking of saving myself the expense.

Last year I had something similar happen to me. I had my cell service with T-mobile since before they were T-mobile. Coverage at the house has always been poor but usable. I succumbed to Verizon's claims about having the best coverage, and sure enough, when I looked at their coverage map my house looked to be in one of ther better coverage areas. I went down to the Verizon store and got one of ther new phones and signed up for a new contract. Ported my number over too. I thought it was strange that I left the store without signing anything and without a paper copy of anything. Not even an email to confirm that the transaction had taken place.

I went back home and discovered that I had no coverage at all at my house. Two blocks away it worked like gangbusters, but the house is definitely in a dead zone.

I went back to Verizon first thing the next morning to have them cancel the contract. They told me there was nothing to do there...they said I should go back to T-mobile and have them port my number back over and that would automatically cancel the Verizon contract. I wasn't very comfortable with that procedure, but that's what I did. The Verizon sales person said that as long as I cancelled the contract within 14 days there would be no charge at all. When I got back home I called Verizon customer service and they verified that my account was cancelled and that nothing was due.

I still had an uneasy feeling about the whole thing, but after a few days I stopped worrying about it. The next week I got a letter in the mail welcoming me to Verizon and stating that I should receive my first bill on 30 days. I made another call to their customer support and was assured that nothing was due.

60 days passed with no bill so I was thinking all was OK. That's whan the collection calls began. They left a message on my voicemail that Verizon had been unable to reach me and that I owed $14 plus collection fees. The local Verizon office had already closed for the evening but I was their first customer next morning when they opened. I was shocked to discover that the people in the store had no way to see my account information, and they had no way to contact their own customer service department other than to call them on the phone and wait through the same queue that I had to wait through each time I had called them. 45 minutes and six agents later I found someone who agreed to cancel the charge, tell the collection agency to stand down, and contact the credit reporting agencies to reverse the informaiotn that had been sent to them. She still could not send me an email or print me a piece of paper to confirm that the charges had been cancelled. After much insistence on my part she agreed to mail a paper confirmation.

I was greatly relieved to receive it a week later. I'll definitely be sticking with T-mobile!

@AspenLogoic: Your biggest mistake was paying by credit card. Never ever ever ever ever ever ever (you get the point) pay a hospital bill by credit card. EVER. You see, once you do that the CC company can come at you forever to get paid.

GoodPoint -- but in this case I wanted to get that $350 off my credit record ASAP

@Rcurl: I did find out that if you bought anything at a Target store in the last year and paid for it using a credit card, they will provide a year of free credit monitoring provided by Experian. They're doing this to try to make customers feel more comfortable after their huge data breach.

It wasn;t just Target -- the data breach also hit other stores like Niman markus (sp?) -- my wife had ordered a birthday present for her mother, and her card details where stolen -- fortunately we discovered it early and cancelled the card.